


Use Your Best Colours

by stonecoldhedwig



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crack, Enemies to Lovers, Multi, Owl Politics, Owls, Phoenixes, The Owlery (Harry Potter), slowburn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:59:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28060542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stonecoldhedwig/pseuds/stonecoldhedwig
Summary: Hedwig is a very respectable owl, thank you very much. Only, one day, she’s bought for a little boy with glasses and a lightning bolt scar, and there begins her journey to Hogwarts, to war, and ultimately, to love. This is her story.
Relationships: Fawkes/Hedwig (Harry Potter)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 24





	1. Not Impressed

**Author's Note:**

> Look. It’s a crack fic. 
> 
> I get asked a lot about my username and whether I’m just a total sadist who likes reminding everyone that Hedwig dies. Not so. It’s because I think we were robbed of Hedwig’s narrative voice in the story, and I am convinced she would have been a stone cold bitch. 
> 
> I adore her. She deserves to have her story told. 
> 
> Yes, the title does come from Taylor Swift’s song tolerate it.

Hedwig was Not Impressed. 

She was a very respectable owl, thank you very much. There was absolutely no reason for the large man with the loud voice and the unkempt beard to have purchased her—for a very reasonable amount, it must be said—and now to be swinging her around as he wandered Diagon Alley like she was an unwieldy handbag. She knew it was Diagon Alley because the letters that came to the shop she’d spent her whole life in were addressed to Eyelops’ Owl Emporium, Diagon Alley. All magical owls can, of course, read. 

Hedwig was Not Impressed because, if she was being honest, she suffered quite badly from motion sickness. All that swinging to-and-fro in her cage made her feel as though she was about to be richly reacquainted with her smoked mouse luncheon. Hedwig had taken particular delight in her lunch that day because Cornelius, the large and inelegant barn owl who shared her perch, had been asleep and thus Hedwig had been able to scoff the treats in a most unladylike manner. Another swing of the cage, and Hedwig reflected that her gluttony might have played a role in her current predicament, too. 

The large man thankfully came to a stop. There was some commotion; a hustle-and-bustle and another great lurch, before Hedwig found her cage in the arms of a rather peculiar boy. 

The boy was small and bespectacled. Scrawny, even, and that was a word that Hedwig didn’t use lightly—she’d seen the state that Perenelle the parakeet was in when she got Wing Withering Disease. Still, the boy looked absolutely thrilled to be given her, which Hedwig thought was the only appropriate response, and that was a point in his favour. And his eyes—he had kind eyes. Kinder eyes than Hedwig had anticipated. Children in Eyelops always seemed terribly ungrateful for the owls that their parents purchased for them. 

This boy even went so far as to introduce himself to her. _Harry_. It was a perfectly respectable name, Hedwig supposed, and she chirruped politely back at him. There was no point in revealing that she had, like most magical owls, the capacity to talk. Humans found it unsettling. As Hedwig often reflected, she found it unsettling when humans spoke as well, but at least she had the decency not to mention it. Nevertheless, she took a begrudging liking to the scrawny boy with the kind eyes and decided that she would keep her thoughts to herself—for now. 

As the boy continued with his shopping—he was more delicate with her than the man had been—Hedwig reflected on the fact that life was about to change quite considerably. She had been at Eyelops’ for eleven years, and was yet to find a proper home. Dr Eyelops said that people found her unnerving, which she thought was quite rude; it wasn’t her fault that she didn’t much need to blink. That, and the fact that she had been hatched on Halloween night, in the midst of a storm, and some folk thought that bad luck. 

That said, Eyelops’ had been pleasant enough. Hedwig would not miss Cornelius. He snored, for one thing, and he made eyes at her when he’d had too much Owl Elixir. Sharing a perch with him had been one of Hedwig’s greater challenges. Still, she liked spending time with Claudette and Evangeline, a pair of gossipy horned owls who kept being returned to the shop by whoever had most recently bought them, due to the fact that they howled quite unnaturally all night. 

Hedwig had never found love. She supposed that would be a shame if it weren’t for the fact that the only bachelors available were Cornelius and a positively ancient crow called Euripides, neither of whom she would call _eligible_. As it stood, she was quite happy alone. She had good standing in the shop, and could rely on getting first selection of owl treats when it came to feeding time. She had organised last year’s Great Christmas Hoot and it had been a roaring success. She was respected. 

There had always been a little fire of jealousy in her at the birds who were picked to be companions for children going to Hogwarts, though. Hedwig had always longed to go. She wanted the busyness and the responsibility and yes—perhaps—the glamour. To be a Hogwarts bird would be quite something, and Hedwig couldn’t help but ruffle her feathers in anticipation. She glanced at the boy who now had her perched on his lap as he ate an ice cream, and she thought that perhaps that boy would be quite something, too. 

Harry, his name was. She must remember to call him Harry. 


	2. Surrounded by Morons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hedwig and Harry travel to Hogwarts, and Hedwig is once again Not Impressed.

Hedwig was Not Impressed. 

The boy, as it turned out, would probably take some work before he could be described as “quite something”. He talked to her, explaining things about the Wizarding world as he found them out, which would have been sweet if it weren’t for the fact that Hedwig knew it all already. Quite serendipitously, he’d picked out her name from Hogwarts: A History—she had been Hedwig her whole life, and that was the name that Harry plucked from the pages for her. Hedwig had found herself feeling almost slightly emotional when it happened, before she promptly pulled herself together. Still—she had grown to like Harry Potter. 

Hedwig did not like the Dursleys. She didn’t like Uncle Vernon with his loud, uncouth voice; she didn’t like Aunt Petunia with her affectations of elegance. And Hedwig certainly, and most vehemently, did not like Dudley. Dudley had a pig’s tail, which Hedwig did not quite understand. She wracked her brains, trying to remember whether she’d read anything over Dr Eyelops’ shoulder about humans having pig tails, but nothing sprung to mind. Whenever Dudley looked at Hedwig suspiciously, she would stare back unblinking. She knew how to upset horrible little boys like him. 

Nothing, therefore, gave Hedwig greater pleasure than the day when those awful people dropped her and Harry off at Kings Cross Station. She ruffled her feathers importantly and waited for Harry to direct the trolley she sat atop to the Hogwarts Express. Admittedly, her carrying cage was a _little_ precariously balanced, but Hedwig decided to view the angle she was sitting at as jaunty, rather than outright dangerous. 

It turned out, however, that the boy did not have the foggiest idea where he was supposed to be going. Hedwig rolled her eyes. _For Merlin’s sake_ , she thought. Fortunately, the boy seemed to spot another group of magical folk who could give him an answer, and rushed over to ask them. Hedwig was, at least, quite proud of the polite way he asked the question; that was the kind of young man she was happy to be a companion to. 

The woman Harry had asked said something about running at the barrier between platforms, and Hedwig spun her head so quickly that she thought she might have cracked something. _At the barrier._ Was this woman mad? Before Hedwig could even think to squawk her objection, Harry had turned his trolley, squared up with the barrier, and began to run. 

Hedwig had made her peace with her death as they hurtled towards the barrier. Life had been alright, hadn’t it? She’d enjoyed her time at Dr Eyelops’, and Harry had been sweet to her in the brief weeks they’d had together. As the trolley picked up speed and the barrier came ever closer, Hedwig did wonder as to whether she’d deserved a death such as this—couldn’t she have had something more elegant like a case of Claw Clopsy, where she could lie on a perch and groan with melancholy as she was surrounded by adoring owls? Or, perhaps some romantic, tormented end like Jessopia the long-eared owl at Dr Eyelops’ who had eloped with a crow and met a rather dramatic end involving the Floo Network. Anything but being made into a cage-brick sandwich. 

As Hedwig planned a death more befitting her station in life than being smashed into a brick wall, she’d failed to notice the fact that she and the boy were no longer hurtling towards the barrier between Platform 9 and 10. Instead, they were on a platform that hadn’t been visible before, and standing beside a great, gleaming scarlet steam engine. _The Hogwarts Express_. 

Hedwig spun around. She gave Harry a dead-eyed stare. All that drama for nothing, she thought, and fought the urge to tell him off, as though he had been the one coming up with ideas as to how would be a suitable way to die. They were soon joined by the magical family Harry had met on the other side, and before she knew it, she’d been _launched_ into Harry’s arms on the train, and was accompanying the pair of boys to a compartment. 

God, children were dull, she thought moodily, as Harry and this other boy—Ron, he was supposedly called—chattered happily to one another. The other boy was accompanied by a foul looking rat that Hedwig didn’t even think she’d have consumed in her mega-binge after Francis the tawny-owl had rejected her offer of a dinner date. She did perk up when it looked like the other boy was about to demonstrate some kind of magic, only for them to be interrupted by a well-spoken girl looking for a toad. Fortunately, the girl also seemed to want to see what promised to be an impressive display of magic, and Hedwig leaned forward with interest. 

_“Sunshine golden, butter mellow, turn this stupid fat rat yellow.”_

Hedwig wanted to scream. Could owls scream? Would it be classified as a screech? That was immaterial, she thought, as she stared furiously out the window of the train as rain spattered the window. How else was she supposed to express her utter rage about the fact that she was, once again, surrounded by morons? 

The girl was clever, though. She very adeptly fixed Harry’s glasses, before leaving the compartment with a swish of her robes and her wild hair, glancing once over her shoulder with her pretty brown eyes. Hedwig respected the girl, and resolved to see if she could meet the girl’s owl at some point. 

Settling down in her cage, Hedwig moodily shut one eye in hope of a rest. Hogwarts, she thought, had to be better than _this_. 


End file.
